1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an oil-water separation apparatus for separating oil from water, and more particularly, to an effective oil interceptor plate (EIP) pack for separating oil from water by floating the oil, which is disposed inside an oil-water separation bath, and causes significant changes in a flow direction of an oil-water mixture to induce a non-laminar flow in the oil-water mixture and hence cohesions of oil particles, and allows the oil to safely float without disturbance and be separated from water, thereby further improving the capacity of separating oil from water.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an apparatus for automatically discharging floating oil is most widely used in the industry fields. In order to separate oil from water, the apparatus adopts a principle that, oil and water exist as a suspending solution, mingled with each other, when maintained in a vortex state, but an oil layer can be separated from a water layer due to the difference in specific gravity between oil and water, when maintained in a calm state.
In the case of an oil-containing liquid, i.e., an oil-water mixture introduced into a floating oil automatic discharging bath, the layer separation cannot easily occur when oil and water have a small difference in specific gravity, whereas the layer separation can occur without a difficulty when the oil and water have a large difference in specific gravity. In particular, fine oil particles may be passed to subsequent processing equipment on water before oil is separated from water. In order to prevent this, the oil-water separation bath must have a sufficient depth, which, however, causes a disadvantage in that the size of the oil-water separation bath is excessively lager.
As an approach to solve such problems, corrugated plates having holes are stacked so as to form packs, which are vertically or horizontally arranged in the inside of the oil-water separation bath. According to the prior art approach mentioned above, while an oil-water mixture passes through the horizontally arranged corrugated packs, fine oil particles mingled in water collide with corrugated plates and cohere with each other, thereby having a larger buoyancy not to be drifted away by the flow of the oil-water mixture, and float on the water surface through the holes perforated in the top end of the corrugated plates. The oil floating on the water surface flows out through a skimmer so as to gather in an oil separation barrel mounted on the outside of the oil-water separation bath, and processed water from which oil is removed flows into subsequent processing equipment.
However, the prior art mentioned above has the following problem. When sludge with a relatively larger specific gravity accumulates on the corrugated pates, the collision of the oil-water mixture with the plates can be weakened, so as to reduce efficiency of oil separation. As a result, it is necessary to periodically disassemble the oil-water separation bath needed in order to remove the sludge from the corrugated plates.
In order to solve the prior art problem mentioned above, a technology is suggested in Korean Patent No. 0119390. In this technology, an oil-water mixture is separated by means of oval-shaped plates, which are stacked in several layers, and are disposed within an oil-water separation bath, so that sludge can gather on and be discharged naturally from a bottom portion of the oil-water separation bath. In addition, even in the case of periodic cleaning, the sludge is naturally discharged only by flushing using water without the disassembling of the oil-water separation bath.
However, although the sludge can be removed effectively, the prior art mentioned above has problems in that water and oil cannot flow and be dispersed uniformly, and floating oil can be drifted away on a water flow while rising on water. In addition, oil agglomeration or oil containing sludge with a specific gravity similar to that of water, i.e., a specific gravity of about 1.0 cannot be easily separated.